AIG bonuses

While the $165 million in AIG bonuses is certainly an outrage the real outrage should be on how much money our government is spending on bailing out AIG and others.

AIG received $170 billion has in bailout money.

To put that in perspective the $165 million in bonuses is only 1/10th of 1 percent of the total amount of tax dollars given to AIG.

.1%!

The other outrage should be that the President and Sen. Dodd, who were some of first the people screaming about the bonuses, are the very ones who put the language in the stimulus bill that allowed for the bonuses to happen!

At first, Dodd denied it:

On Tuesday, Dodd told FOX News that he didn't add the exemption.

"When the language went to the conference and came back, there was different language," he said then. "I can tell you this much, when my language left the Senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did."

Then he admitted that he did add the exemption but that the President's Treasury officials forced him to do it:
In a dramatic reversal Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd confessed to adding language to a spending cap in the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill's passage. Dodd, D-Conn., told FOX News that Treasury officials forced him to make the change.

The orchestrated outrage about the bonuses is, IMO, a smoke screen or distraction to keep the taxpayers from realizing what they REALLY should be outraged about: the fact that our leaders have acted recklessly, irresponsibly and quite possibly corruptly.